


Distant Thunder

by madamebadger



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Absence, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, Fancy Words Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 00:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3401798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra fights with sword and shield; Josephine fights with word and pen. But Josephine doesn't realize at first what, precisely, it means to have a paladin lover--and what it means to be the one who stays behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distant Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Brontide - The low rumbling of distant thunder.

It doesn't begin—the worry—right away. Josephine knows from the start, of course, that Cassandra's role in the Inquisition is not a safe one, is indeed one of the least safe ones. She knows that as a fact, and had someone tried to warn her about it, she would have scoffed in the privacy of her own head. Cassandra is a warrior. Cassandra is the type of warrior who stands with sword and shield, a living wall between the enemy and those who fight more fleetly with dagger and bow and magic. Josephine has seen Cassandra at her daily practice in the courtyard, her back straight and her sword-arm strong like something out of a legend. She has seen Cassandra sparring, has seen the way she carries her shield steady as her faith so that even the blows of the Bull glance off it.

And loves it—not just the sheer physicality of it, her lover lean and strong as a mountain lion, steady as an oak, but the idea of it. Cassandra is a warrior, and she kills, yes, but she _defends_. She puts herself between her allies and the things that threaten them. It is that, partly, that knowledge that gave Josephine the courage all those weeks ago to put her heart in the safety of Cassandra's hands.

She doesn't know all the stories, because Cassandra doesn't talk about them much. She will talk about what they did on the road, the people they met, the tasks they performed (she made Josephine laugh herself almost sick, once, describing the time the Inquisitor got it in her head to herd a lost druffalo home to its paddock), the misadventures they suffered (the way Bull fell in a pit and was down there four hours singing awful drinking songs until they managed to come up with a rope that could bear his weight)—but not about the fighting.

"Talking about combat is painfully dull," she said once, early on, when they had only been together for a time that Josephine counted in days. (And she counted them, oh yes, light on her feet and humming in the halls despite everything, because Cassandra's smile was—is—enough to buoy even the most laden heart.) "People always expect it to be interesting and then they are disappointed because 'he struck and I blocked his blow and then I saw an opening'—it isn't interesting to listen to. I would rather not bore you with it."

"I'm sure that's not true. Varric and the Iron Bull always have quite the audience." Josephine traced, lightly, the scar curling around Cassandra's wrist like a spiderweb-bracelet, delighted in the way it made Cassandra's pulse flutter beneath her fingertips.

"That's because they are better storytellers than I. Which is because they _make things up_ ," Cassandra said, the sourness in her voice belied by the way her fingers threaded through Josephine's, calluses warm and rough against her palm. "It isn't nearly so exciting if you keep to the simple truth."

"Not even the time with the dragon and the Divine?" Josephine asked—teased, really—and when Cassandra's head went back against the back of the couch with an audible thunk she laughed. "Never mind, I'll ask Varric." _That_ earned her a narrow look from Cassandra that made her laugh again because she knew Cassandra didn't mean it, and because it was so very Cassandra. "All right, I won't tease," she said, and curled her fingers tighter around Cassandra's to pull her into a kiss that was hesitant, still, soft but growing, kindling a languid warmth in her belly.

Now she measures their time together in months, not days, and she has seen all of Cassandra's scars—and they are plentiful, a map and a history on the endless line of her back. And she has seen death at Haven; it was not the first time she had seen death (she has, after all, killed, and that one death still weighs heavy on her heart in the quiet hours of the night), but it was the first time that she had seen death in any number, wartime death. For all that it seems sometimes that she is the innocent of them, compared to Cullen and Leliana and Cassandra, she is not ignorant, nor is she naive.

But still Josephine does not fully understand it until it happens that for once she finishes her work soon enough to join the Inquisitor's party in the tavern.

Cassandra does not frequent the tavern often, but she goes on those days after she has returned with the Inquisitor from some trip or other. They all seem to congregate there, the next day, after a good night's sleep and a few hot meals and a scouring bath. It is a rite of bonding, Josephine knows—a celebration that they have made it back, a sharing of stories, for all that the stories are usually an almost-incomprehensible mash of things: Bull boasting extravagantly and Dorian boasting more subtly, Varric attempting to maintain some kind of narrative throughline while Sera interrupts him every few words (generally with something obscene or at least irreverent), Cassandra indignantly interrupting them _all_ in an attempt to set the record straight, and Blackwall laughing, just laughing and laughing—it's good to hear Blackwall laugh these days.

Normally Josephine cannot make it to these tavern evenings, or at least she cannot make it early. There is a great deal to do on the days after the Inquisitor returns, reports to process and letter to write. She is used to joining them late for the end of the stories and to steal Cassandra away for a more private homecoming. (They are not hiding it, exactly, what is between them, but they are also not flaunting it. The Inquisitor knows, and Cullen and Leliana, of course, and she thinks most of the others—the Inquisitor's inner circle, as it were—have probably guessed, but they are still being quiet about it. She likes that, in some ways, keeping it something for them, not something for the whole world.)

But this time as she arrives, Bull is saying, "Holy shit, Cassandra, the way you threw yourself at that dragon—it was half 'sexiest shit I've ever seen' and half 'mother of fuck, does the woman have a death wish?'"

"I did not—" Cassandra begins.

"Yes," Blackwall says, "yes, you did, Cassandra." He's laughing. "Every time, every _time_ , the bigger the enemy, the more you seem to think that flying straight at them with your sword would be a good idea. The way you throw yourself bodily into battle, it half gives me a heart attack, I am not ashamed to admit."

They have not seen her. Cassandra has not seen her. Cassandra is sitting with a foot up, smiling a little to herself, pleased. It is not, Josephine realizes, with a strange sinking feeling, her stop-it-you're-exaggerating face. "I know what I can do," she says, "and I know my limits."

"Uh huh, right, that's why I had to prop you up and force a potion down your throat, yeah?" Sera says, and there's laughter in her voice, and Josephine's stomach chills.

"That was only the one time," Cassandra says, reaching for her wineglass.

"Only the one time _this trip_ , Seeker," Varric says. "Do I have to remind you about the thing with the bears? Plural bears? Plural _great_ bears?" And Cassandra makes a dismissive gesture but does not deny it.

It is not polite to lurk in doorframes, and more to the point it would not be particularly dignified for them to see her lurking in doorframes, so Josephine clears her throat and goes in, then.

"Ruffles," Varric says. "Come in, sit down. We were just talking about Cassandra and the dragon." And Josephine smiles, makes herself smile.

Later, in the privacy of her room, she kisses Cassandra with an urgency that is not quite passion—or rather, that is passion, but not a passion for sex. A passion instead to reassure herself that Cassandra is alive.

_The way you throw yourself bodily into battle_ , Blackwall said, and Iron Bull: _does this woman have a death wish?_

She knew, she did. But she didn't _know_.

Cassandra's hands settle easily at her waist, fingers bunching in her sash to pull her inch by inch closer, and when they break finally apart she says, "I can't fault the welcome home." There is the edge—just the barest edge—of an unspoken question in it.

Josephine cannot say the first thing that comes to her mind, because it is incredibly stupid. _I did not quite realize until today that you might die out there, that I might say goodbye to you someday and never see you again._ Her head knew it, that Cassandra's work was dangerous, deadly-dangerous. But her heart didn't, apparently. _Stupid._

It does now, and it thunders with worry in her breast, a new worry but an old danger, as if it is trying to catch up for every trip that Josephine did not worry sufficiently about.

But that—that is so dramatically, unreasonably foolish that Josephine cannot give it voice, not even with Cassandra. Especially not with Cassandra. So instead she says, "I missed you," which is also true.

They are both too tired for much more than kissing, but they curl up together under the blankets. Cassandra's fingers comb through her hair, and she lets that sooth her a little. She tries not to think about the new scar running from Cassandra's collarbone to just below her sternum, as if something tried to gut her; tries not to wonder whether that is the injury that made Sera force a potion between her lips—tries not to think of Cassandra, bloodied, unconscious, torn open—

She can feel Cassandra's heartbeat on the inside of her arm. Alive, alive, alive.

* * *

She puts it out of her mind—convinces herself that nothing has changed. Nothing _has_ changed. Cassandra was always going into deadly danger, and has always come back from it in one piece, if occasionally with new scars. They are all in various degrees of danger: Cassandra is farther to one end of the spectrum, but it is a spectrum. (She certainly knows it. She had thought herself, if not precisely safe in Haven, then at least not in immediate danger; she had seen firsthand how wrong she was.) They have all accepted it, she tells herself, everyone in the Inquisition, accepted the potential for danger, for death, in the name of what is right.

(She remembers the dragon in Haven, remembers seeing people, people she _knew_ if not knew well, rendered so suddenly to ash and charred bones. She has dreamed of that, fragmented dreams of fire and a roaring like a great wind and terrified voices lifted on the air. She would not say she dreams of it often, but she does dream of it, and sometimes she wakes with a sudden gasp from those dreams, and sometimes Cassandra is there to stroke her back wordlessly until she falls asleep again.

If she dreams like this, what must _Cassandra_ , who has seen and suffered so much worse—what must Cassandra dream? But no, Cassandra sleeps deeply. Cassandra chalks it up to physical exertion, and no doubt that is part of it, but there is something in Josephine that cannot help but think of it as _the sleep of the just_.)

Then the Inquisitor goes out again, and Cassandra with her, of course.

Josephine keeps herself busy, keeps herself busy and busy, and that works for a while. It does work, for a while. If you have enough to do you can distract your mind: she has learned that lesson well. She has always been a hard worker. And she has always been good at... not repressing her feelings but compartmentalizing them. If she must entertain some dignitary who she privately cannot stand, she puts her loathing in a little box for the duration and refuses to let it out until afterwards. Now she puts her fear in a box and locks it up inside her heart so that she can continue to do her job, as she is being trusted to do her job.

But the worry creeps in, so soft and quiet that she almost doesn't notice at first, like clouds gathering overhead. Until one day she looks up from her desk and the shadow covers her heart, leaden as stormclouds, a looming fear that threatens to choke her.

The scouts send regular reports, and so she hears sporadic updates, and she clings to those like a lifeline. Surely if Cassandra was—was killed, or even was very badly injured such that her potions or her companions' magic could not aid her, surely one of the reports would mention it. But the scouts only brought so many of Leliana's messenger-birds with them, and they must be conserved and parceled out. The reports come days, weeks apart.

"You have to keep it together, Josie," Leliana says, finally, when they meet as they so often do in the evening.

Josephine drops her head, sighs. "Is it that obvious?"

"To me. Not to anyone else, no. I do not mistrust your ability to do your job." Leliana's eyes aren't unsympathetic, but they are uncompromising. "You knew who she was before you began this."

Leliana is the kind of friend who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Josephine treasures her for that. But that does not make it so much easier to hear. "I know. I _know_." Indeed, Josephine knows the undeniable ironic truth of it, that the romance of a paladin lover was part of what had attracted her to Cassandra at the first. Not so much now, not now that she has so many other things to treasure (the way Cassandra sits in the evening with her legs tucked under her reading a book, the wrinkle between her brows when she throws open the shutters in the morning and the new sunlight hits her face—and the way she always does it even though she knows it will make her flinch, the husky sound of her genuine laughter, the way she loves potatoes dripping with butter and doesn't care for beets, the curve of her neck and the angle of her wrists, the intent steadiness of her hands as she lines her eyes with kohl before going out, a thousand precious fragile things that make her not just some handsome warrior-woman but _Cassandra_ ), but yes, of course at the first she was drawn to that strong sword-arm, that heroic lift to her chin, the bright battlefield eyes.

"Why now? She has gone away before many times, even since you two became," Leliana's mouth quirks, "an item."

"I don't know." Josephine hesitates. "No, yes, I do, I suppose. I happened to overhear them talking in the tavern, teasing her about the way she takes risks. I knew her work was dangerous. —I'm not stupid, you know."

"I would never call you stupid, Josie."

"But I hadn't quite realized how _much_ she puts herself in danger."

"I have seen Cassandra fighting," Leliana said. "More than once. She does it as she does all things: with her whole heart. You know she is not good at keeping anything back."

"Yes. Of course," Josephine says, and sees that little glimmer in Leliana's eyes, and can't help the smile twitching at her lips. Yes, of course she knows. Cassandra kisses her with that same intensity, as if there's nothing in the world but the two of them, and it is heady beyond belief. Cassandra's eyes are as focused, her hands as steady—although infinitely gentler—in the bedroom as they are on the battlefield. Josephine loves that about her. But that was before she could so vividly imagine Cassandra throwing herself so fearlessly and without reservation into the jaws of danger. "But... I realized—I think I had not really thought that I could...." She trails off. It is hard even to say it aloud. "Could lose her. I knew, but—I didn't—"

"It is hard to be left behind," Leliana says. "Sometimes I think this is harder than the Blight. At least then I was always _there_ , to see, to know, to act. Mind you, often 'there' was stinking, darkspawn-infested tunnels, which I do not recommend."

Leliana is trying to lighten her heart, Josephine knows, and though it is not entirely successful, she is grateful. "I will bear that in mind," she says. Then, "How do you—?"

"Wait. Pray. It is not so different than diplomacy, I think. You spend a lot of time waiting there, too. And hoping, or praying."

"I suppose that's true."

* * *

Still, the waiting hangs heavy over her, heavy as the rumble of thunder in the distance. She thinks of Cassandra, her fierce hawk's glare, her rare smiles warm enough to melt snow, her Nevarran accent rich and heavy like velvet—and the way it burrs when she is irritated or even just tired, like velvet rubbed the wrong way. Her long powerful body like the statue of a warrior-goddess, the careless way she takes off her shirt and the way the movement brings out every sleek muscle of her back and shoulders and arms, the surprisingly sensual curve of her hip, the way she curls Josephine's hair between her fingers. Her love for beautiful poems and terrible books, the way she talks to her horse when she thinks no one is looking. Her changeable eyes, her swift warm smile, her straight spine, her steady hands.

To the Inquisition, everyone is potentially expendable except the Inquisitor with her inimitable Anchor—Cassandra herself has in the past expressed a willingness (even an unhesitating willingness) to sacrifice herself for the cause, for the Inquisitor and the Inquisition. But to Josephine, there will never be anyone like Cassandra ever again. The thought of losing her, of losing all those tiny wonderful things about her, chills her with the penetrating iciness of winter rain.

She tries not to think on it, and during the day she is mostly successful, but in the evening the worry pulls at her mind, as relentless and useless and miserable as a tied dog pulling on the end of its chain. She can feel it dragging at her thoughts, digging ruts in them, paths that make it only easier for the anxious thoughts to reroute their course over and over, the fear that something will happen to Cassandra, that her confidence will give way to recklessness or that she will meet a challenge too great even for her or even, most horribly, simply that she will be _unlucky_.

The fear that Josephine will not be able to bear it if it does.

She wishes she could go back in time, to before she heard Blackwall and the Iron Bull—Blackwall and Bull, of all people! hardly cautious themselves!—talking about Cassandra in battle. Cassandra was in no more danger then, and at least the fear for her did not gnaw so in Josephine's gut.

She works late to keep the thoughts at bay, takes on letter-writing that she could and perhaps should delegate, to reduce the hours at which her hands may be idle. Leliana distracts her when she can, but Leliana is busy as well, and Josephine cannot monopolize her time. (Cullen comes to take tea with her _voluntarily_ on two separate occasions, and she wonders if he has noticed her worry, or if that is a suggestion from Leliana, or if it is purely chance.) But when she cannot or does not work herself to exhaustion, when there is no one in the silent evenings and mornings to distract her recalcitrant and uncooperative mind, she paces, she digs her fingers into her palms until her nails leave circle-marks there, she stares out the window to the wide dark sky. Cassandra is somewhere there, under that sky, perhaps safe, perhaps not, and she wonders, worries, prays.

* * *

And then, sudden as sunlight, they return.

Josephine knows that it would be a terrible idea for so many reasons to run down to the long bridge where she can see the Inquisitor's party riding up, to pull Cassandra off her horse and into a kiss, to reassure herself that Cassandra is here and alive. Instead she watches from the balcony with her fingers clenching cold-knuckle tight until she is sure that she has identified Cassandra's horse (the big bay mare that Cassandra calls 'sweetheart' and spoils with apple slices) and reassured herself that the horse has a rider, the upright figure that could be no one else but Cassandra, armor bright in the sun. She closes her eyes and feels the tight anxiety in her chest loosen for the first time in weeks.

It is, as always, rather later before she can welcome Cassandra back properly. She has had thoughts of how she will do that for weeks, romantic plans—she is good at planning, but when the moment comes somehow, somehow she finds that she cannot follow through with it. Cassandra comes to her rooms in the evening—hair damp, freshly-bathed after days on the road, something Cassandra is meticulous about even when Josephine would perhaps put up with the smell of horse to see her a little sooner—and says, "I have missed you," which from Cassandra who is shy about words and especially shy about putting feelings into words is practically a speech.

"So have I," Josephine says, and goes to her, kisses her. This is all part of what she expected to have happen. But the touch of Cassandra's lips against hers sends a shudder through her, and it is not a shudder of lust. Cassandra's mouth is warm, her breath soft on Josephine's cheek, her shoulders solid under Josephine's hands, and somehow it's that that makes Josephine tremble. She has nothing to worry about now, Cassandra is _here_ , alive and well, kissing her with that soft intent focus that Josephine loves so well. And yet it _is_ now that the fear wrenches like lightning down her spine and makes her shake.

And Cassandra notices, of course she does, because while she can be unsure in the extreme about personal things, she is not unobservant. And Josephine's shivering spine is under her hand. She pulls back and her brows draw together. "What's wrong?"

It would be easy to make something up, to pass it off as a momentary shiver, or to pretend that it is simply overwhelming longing, and for a moment that is... tempting. Because she cannot think how to say it in a way that will not sound naive at best: _I realize that you have been engaging in deadly combat regularly for nigh on two decades, but it only just now occurred to me that you might die._ For Cassandra this is life, this is normal, even ordinary.

Josephine gave up being a bard after one close encounter with death—and not even her own death. She does not regret that even slightly, but it means that her expectations, her assumptions, her very nature is alien to the normalities of Cassandra' s life. Diplomacy is serious work and can be dangerous but it is not the same danger; she makes decisions that will affect lives for decades, even centuries—she carries the fates of nobles and their houses in her hands—but it is not, at the end of the day, the _same_ as what Cassandra does. It is no less important but it is not _the same_ ; Cassandra's world is a world apart and it frightens her.

How can she possibly make that sound sensible, reasonable, anything less than—than _insane_ to Cassandra?

But no. She will not lie, not to Cassandra who treasures truth above all things, not even if it makes her appear foolish to tell the truth.

"I was worried about you," she says. "I was frightened that you might not come back."

Cassandra looks if anything more befuddled. "I don't understand," she says. Her fingers are warm and solid against the small of Josephine's back, her thumb rubbing along her spine, but her expression is one of a woman trying to comprehend something and failing. "It isn't any more dangerous than most of our trips. Less, if anything. We've closed most of the rifts in the Exalted Plains by now."

"I know," Josephine says, "I know, that's what makes it so ridiculous." She swallows hard and closes her eyes, still shivery and feeling as if her joints have turned to water, trying to summon up words to make this understandable to Cassandra. Cassandra's hand tightens on the small of her back, pulling her closer. (Cassandra is not comfortable with words, Josephine has learned: she isn't practiced with them and, perhaps even more than that, she doesn't trust them. But she is very expressive with her gestures.) Her arms settle around Josephine. Josephine presses her face into Cassandra's neck, feeling her pulse, breathing her scent: there's the sweet-sharp-spiciness of the lavender-sage soap she uses, and beneath that a smell of leather and smoke that never quite goes away, and below that the warm subtle smell of her skin, so familiar and so beloved. Josephine rests against her, breathes her in, feels the solid warmth of her arms, the strength of her back beneath Josephine's palms as she holds tight. She can feel Cassandra's heartbeat, her pulse, warm with life.

"You're good at talking," Cassandra says against her temple, breath stirring the free tendrils of her hair. "Talk to me. I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong."

And despite herself Josephine smiles into Cassandra's shoulder. That's so like her, to immediately seek a solution even before she knows what the problem is. A Seeker in all ways.

"It is foolishness," she says, "I know it is."

Cassandra kisses her, softly, at the edge of her eyebrow, and doesn't say anything. Waits.

Josephine draws a long breath, lets it out. "But—the last time you were gone, when you came back, I overheard Blackwall and the Iron Bull discussing your fighting style. I know how you fight, I have seen you train and I have seen you spar, but I have never seen you on the road. It made me realize, really realize how much danger you're in. I knew, I'm not a fool, but I didn't really _know_. I didn't think about it, until I heard them." She swallows, feels her throat constrict, hot and tight. "Warriors _die_ , Cassandra."

"Everyone dies," Cassandra says.

Josephine laughs, and she can feel the edges of a sob in the sound. "That's not what I mean, and furthermore, you know it."

Cassandra's thumb strokes along her spine again, and after a moment she says, "...yes. You're right, I do know."

"And there's nothing to be done about it. You don't need to tell me that. You're needed, and even if you weren't, this is who you _are_. And I love who you are. I would not have you any other way. But I—" She shakes her head, once, sharply. "The life you take for granted is not one that I have ever known. And I—I cannot stop fearing for you, and it seems the fear grows larger each day you are away, and I am afraid that someday I will... no longer be able to contain it."

Cassandra pulls a little back, then, takes her hands and tugs her through the door that separates her sitting room from her bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed and Josephine sits next to her. And for a moment they just sit, Josephine leaning a little against her side, Cassandra's hands warm around hers. The scars on Cassandra's body are a familiar map by now, but her hands are an ever-changing terrain: the calluses shift a little when she gets a new sword or a better shield, and new nicks and abrasions replace old ones that have since healed. Cassandra is quiet, still, searching for words, perhaps—but Josephine lets her cheek settle against Cassandra's shoulder, feeling her breath fall into sync with Cassandra's. It has long confounded her, Cassandra's mistrust of words, her outright embarrassment at discussing her own feelings, but sometimes, sometimes her warm silences can be restful.

After a moment she says, finally, "I will come back to you, always, as long as I am able. You know that."

Josephine closes her eyes and smiles, though it is not a mirthful smile. Another lover might leap to the reassuring lie, promise to always come back without caveat, but Cassandra respects the truth too much for that. "Yes," she says. "It's the 'as long as you are able' that has left me sleepless." 

"I am not as reckless as Blackwall and Bull may have lead you to believe," Cassandra says, dryly. "I do not hold back and I do not hesitate, but I know what I can handle and what I cannot." Josephine nods, and waits for the 'but' that she knows is coming, and sure enough: "But," Cassandra says, "you are right that there is always a chance that something might go wrong, that we might be ambushed or outmatched. I cannot in honesty tell you that there isn't. And you know that if my… sacrifice was required, I would give it."

Josephine nods.

"But Josephine—" Cassandra pauses, and then says, "Look at me." Josephine lifts her head and opens her eyes, and oh, Cassandra is so beautiful, serious and luminous, the elegance of her cheekbones and the line of her jaw and the leashed fire of her eyes. Cassandra would scoff if she said it aloud, but Josephine is sure that she has never met anyone as beautiful. Cassandra lets go of her hand, cups her cheek. "You give me more reason than I have ever had to find any other solution first. Once I might have been drawn to the romance of being a martyr. Now I find that all I want is to make my way back home to you."

There is no answer to that but to kiss her, and so Josephine does. Her arms slip around Cassandra's neck and Cassandra's settle against her waist, hands strong to pull her closer even though there is almost no space between them as it is. She kisses Cassandra urgently and Cassandra meets it with softness and someone who did not know them well might think it to be the opposite—but it is not, or rather, not always. Her lips part on a little sound that is half a plea, and Cassandra does not disappoint her, Cassandra never disappoints her, not like this.

"I will be here, when you come," she says when they part for a breath, and Cassandra slides a hand into her hair, knocking pins askew, to kiss her again, and again, and still again.

And despite the gentleness of Cassandra's lips on hers she thinks, sometimes, that she can taste the wildness on Cassandra's tongue. She goes out into the wilderness but there is a wilderness inside her, too—for all that she is dutiful, responsible, there is a wildness in Cassandra. Her whole life is a long struggle against those who would leash her, while Cassandra will accept no leash except her own faith and her own commitment to what's right. She loves order and she loves rules but she will only be bound by them if she has judged them and found them true and honorable. Josephine knows that, even with all her worry, given a chance she would not try to hold Cassandra here with her, even to keep her safe. Like a hunting hawk she must be let go to fly; to do otherwise would be to change her beyond recognition.

But she has come back and now Josephine thinks of that, hands slipping beneath her gambeson as Cassandra loosens the silk at Josephine's throat and shifts to kiss the side of her neck, her shoulder.

They both wear many clothes, against the cold of Skyhold but also as armor: literal in Cassandra's case, metaphorical in Josephine's. It comes off, now, piece by piece over the side of the bed, and Josephine is never careless of her clothes except on the days that Cassandra has come home. Cassandra loves words but does not trust them, and so now they speak with not even words between them. _I will always come back to you_ and _I will always be here_ and _I am here, now_.

When Cassandra finds her release Josephine is holding her close, her staggered breath lost in Josephine's mouth as she shudders under Josephine's hand, and it will never stop being miraculous that she can make Cassandra—so powerful, so self-contained—tremble. And Josephine's climax, when it comes, snaps the tension that has drawn her tight for weeks on end, leaving her soft, soft, soft and warm now in the reflection of Cassandra's delighted smile.

And even later than that, once murmured endearments and the pet names that never see the light of day have given way to Cassandra's deep sleep, Josephine lies awake in the darkness. With the candle snuffed and the fire banked and the shutters closed against the night wind, it is almost unrelievedly black in the room, so that she can see her lover only by the black-on-black contrasts of shadows and the touch of her fingertips. Many times before, like this—she is the night owl to Cassandra's morning lark—she has been entranced by the power of her lover's body, broad shoulders, muscles discernible even when she's slack with sleep, the sharpness of her cheekbones and the strength of her arm thrown over Josephine. Now she is just as entranced by her fragility, the way her pulse beats slow and steady beneath the thin skin of her throat, the subtle shift of her eyelids as she dreams. 

It is love that makes her afraid, because if she did not love so much she would not have so much to lose, would not have a loss worth fearing. And yet it is love that makes the fear worthwhile. It's a riddle, a puzzle that she will never quite unravel. There is no solving it: Cassandra will be here for a time, and then she will go away again, and Josephine will worry. She will find ways to deal with it, yet still she will worry. It is enough to say: the hope is worth the fear. She would rather have the bitter than give up the sweet.

* * *

Josephine wakes at dawn to the sound of rain—not just a drizzle but a thunderous rain that pounds on the shutters, and she is glad that she remembered to shut them. The air is soft and heavy with the smell of rain, half-forgotten after a long winter and cold spring of many snows. She lifts her head to listen to it, like drums against the walls and windows, and feels something uncurl a bit in her chest.

Cassandra stirs. Sleepily, she says, "Is that—?"

"Rain," Josephine says. She curls deeper under the blanket even though it isn't really that cold, tangling her legs with Cassandra's, the delicious slide of warm skin on warm skin.

"I suppose that means I will have to put off my training," Cassandra says, with an air of grievance that Josephine can see right through, and that Cassandra clearly knows that Josephine can see right through. She allows herself the pleasure of imagining a lazy morning, building up the fire, hot tea and toast and the book she bought for Cassandra that she had meant to give her the night before, before all her plans went awry. Well, perhaps not awry. Perhaps just... delayed.

"I imagine I could think of something to do in the meantime," she says, trailing her fingertips up the lush curve of Cassandra's hip, curling around to the small of her back.

Cassandra's grin is sudden, breathtaking, wild, and though Josephine can see it coming a mile off still she half-shrieks when Cassandra actually does pounce, rolling her over onto her back and kissing her between peals of laughter. And yes, she thinks, with Cassandra warm and strong in her arms and the rain pouring outside like a curtain to keep the world out—it's worth it, always, it is all worth it.


End file.
